Australian telecom providers admit customer information leaking

Two of Australia's largest telecommunications providers have been forced to admit that they passed on customer phone numbers to third parties in a "commercial relationship."

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on Friday that customers from Telstra and Sing-Tel's Australian subsidiary Optus had been subscribed to services from these third parties without their consent.

Optus admitted to the practice, known as HTTP header enrichment or carrier billing, after an Adelaide-based software developer found he had been involuntarily subscribed to a web games site at the cost of 15 Australian dollars (11.5 U.S. dollars) per month.

The developer said telecommunications companies use carrier billing to give Australian customers less barriers to sign up to a service.

"Every step you make a customer do to sign up, is one where they might turn away," the developer said. "But, I think it fundamentally breaches your privacy and security in the process."

An Optus spokesperson said information about the devices their customers use while web browsing is passed onto website owners to optimize services.

"Optus adds our customer's mobile number to the information in select circumstances where we have a commercial relationship with owners of particular websites."

Telstra confirmed the practice, saying that they provided " customers' mobile phone numbers to a small number of our content partners".

A Telstra spokesperson told the ABC it enabled the customer to choose to receive the service and pay for it via their phone bill.

"We provide this information on the basis of legal terms in our partner contracts that help ensure the privacy of customers," the spokesperson said.

Optus ignored ABC's request for list of websites it has a commercial relationship with. Endi